Tech Transfer: sovereignty, impact, and a vision for Europe

Tech Transfer: sovereignty, impact, and a vision for Europe

Albert Mascarell, director of Tech Transfer at Mobile World Capital Barcelona

Europe is at a decisive moment: only those regions capable of transforming
knowledge into industrial capacity will maintain their technological
sovereignty and global competitiveness. Today, more than 90% of
technologies emerging from European research never reach the market. To
face this challenge, technology transfer becomes a strategic infrastructure
of the highest order. There’s a need for national innovation systems that
connect research, entrepreneurship and industrial deployment with a strong
national ambition and a European outlook.

At Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, we have been building a
public tech transfer model with the capacity for scale, rigour, and impact. It
goes further than just incubating or accelerating ideas. We’re talking about
generating deep tech solutions that emerge from applied science and
become viable companies through hybrid teams, entrepreneurial knowledge,
and strategic institutional support.
This model evolved from our experience with programs such as The Collider,
has become a benchmark in Catalonia, Spain, and Europe. 

 Its alignment with the European Innovation Council (EIC) strategy has also enabled us to promote a continent-wide alliance for deep tech venture building and to actively
participate in the definition of new instruments that connect research and the
market with European funding.


In 2025, the EIC allocated over €1.4 billion to fund frontier technologies such
as medical devices, generative AI and machine learning, advanced biotechnology, nanotechnology, and new functional materials. At Mobile World Capital Foundation, since 2018, we have been helping turn this potential
into market realities through the continuous construction of a portfolio that includes 22 deep tech spin-offs
in fields like smart logistics, applied neuroscience, cardiovascular health,
non-invasive diagnostics, photonics for cooling, and microparticle pollution
detection.

The results are tangible: this ecosystem has generated an aggregate
valuation of over €100 million, attracted top-tier private investment and
public funding, and positioned Catalonia — and increasingly Spain — as a European deep tech hub. But
beyond the numbers, we are proving that it is possible to make innovation
policy from the public sector, with a transformative vision and real systemic
impact.


To scale up, we need the collaboration of the entire value chain: universities, research centres, tech transfer offices, entrepreneurs, corporates, investors and public institutions. The Foundation offers a structure ready to provide
strategic, financial and business development support to technologies with
market potential. Collaboration is the key to multiplying impact, and defining clear roles across the ecosystem will be essential to unlock it truly.

We need stable structures that operate at scale, are aligned with European and national
objectives, and can turn science into industrial sovereignty.
Technology transfer must stop being peripheral: it must become a central
public policy. This is the path we intend to follow.


At the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, we are starting a new
chapter. We will promote strategic alliances, strengthen the public venture
building model, and work to consolidate an innovation architecture with real
impact. The goal is clear: to become Spain’s and  Europe’s deep tech reference hub: a
model capable of transforming knowledge into industrial solutions, driving
the development of cutting-edge technologies from public research, and leading the
new science-based economy.


Europe’s — and Spain’s — leadership depends on its ability to turn the knowledge it generates
into industry. At Mobile World Capital, we are ready to walk this path.

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